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Powell, Maud.
COLLECTION: Maud Powell materials
LOCATION AS OF February, 2002: Photographs and individual paper items in
Collections File ("Powell, Maud"); 78-rpm records in the University Press
Building Library storage area.
PROVENANCE: Many items donated by Marshall Howenstein, at the suggestion of
School of Music faculty member Paul Rolland; other items from various sources,
as documented through correspondence and memos in the Collections File folder.
WHEN ACQUIRED: September 6, 1972 (initial donation by Marshall Howenstein)
DESCRIPTION: The acclaimed violinist Maud Powell (1867-1920) was born in Peru,
Illinois, spent her formative years in Aurora, and studied in Europe with
Schradieck, Dancla, and Joachim. She concertized extensively in Europe and
America, appeared with major symphony orchestras, and was a featured soloist
with Sousa's band.
In 1972 Marshall Howenstein donated to the University a collection of Maud
Powell artifacts and photographs (some of which were arranged in a small display
case), including a plaster cast of Maud Powell's hand, a brooch, linen
handkerchief, a medal, and a miniature photograph of the young Maud Powell on a
pin. These five items (having never been officially inventoried as University of
Illinois property) were subsequently donated, with the concurrence of Howenstein,
to the newly-established Maud
Powell Foundation in Arlington, Virginia.
The remaining paper materials in the Collections File include a number of
photographs; concert programs and other ephemera; several notes from Powell's
cousin Mabel Love to Howenstein; copies of newspaper and magazine articles;
biographical and genealogical sketches; discographies; an obituary; and a
xeroxed copy of published sheet music, "Caprice on Dixie" (1916), for
unaccompanied violin, by Herman Bellstedt, Jr., ''as played by Maud Powell (for
whom it was written)." Among other items in the Music Library related to Maud
Powell are the following:
Martens, Frederick H.
Violin mastery: talks with master violinists and teachers (New York: 1919)
[787.1 M36v; copy in Special Collections is inscribed to Powell by the author,
with colored photograph of her violin attached to flyleaf]
Recordings: refer to online catalog for CD and LP discs.
Uncataloged (78 rpm): Victrola 810 A-B, 808 A-B; Victor 64028, 64073, 74402,
74446, 74492, 74547 (possibly additional 78-rpm records among uncataloged
holdings)
ARRANGEMENT: Photographs and other paper materials are unprocessed. Uncataloged
records (78 rpm) are interfiled by company/serial number within uncataloged
78-rpm records in University Press Building Library storage area.
ACCESS/FINDING AIDS/BIBLIOGRAPHY: See Victor discography listings and inventory
of Powell materials in the Collections File folder (or in the Music Library's
Subject File). The Collections File folder also includes a copious file of
correspondence between Music Librarian William McClellan and donor Marshall
Howenstein, scholars Neva Greenwood and Karen Famera, and curators of museums to
which materials were deposited or loaned.
INDEX TERMS: Howenstein, Marshall; Powell, Maud; Violin
SEE ALSO: "Powell, Maud" in New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians,
2d ed. (New York: 2001), vol.20, p.241
Shaffer, Karen A.
Maud Powell, pioneer American violinist (Arlington, VA: 1988) [ML418.P79
S5]
Powell, Maud (b Peru, IL, 22 Aug 1867; d Uniontown PA, 8 Jan 1920. American
violinist. She began violin and piano lessons in Aurora, Illinois, then studied
violin for four years with William Lewis in Chicago. She was a pupil at the
Leipzig Conservatory under Henry Schradieck (1881-2) and at the Paris
Conservatoire under Charles Dancla (1882-3), then in 1883 made a tour of
England. The following year she studied with Joachim at the Berlin Hochschule
fur Musik. She made her European debut with the Berlin PO under Joachim in 1885,
and her American debut with the New York PO under Theodore Thomas in the same
year. She toured Europe with the New York Arion Society in 1892, and performed
twice under Thomas at the World's Columbian Exposition, Chicago (1893), at which
she delivered a paper "Women and the Violin" to the Women's Musical Congress.
Powell's mission was to advance America's cultural growth by bringing the best
in classical music to Americans in remote areas as well as the large cultural
centres. She was one of the first to champion works by American composers and
introduced to the American public concertos by Tchaikovsky, Dvorak, Saint-Saens,
Lalo, Sibelius, Coleridge-Taylor and Arensky. She also toured widely in Europe
and was particularly popular with audiences in England. Powell became one of the
first American women to form and lead a string quartet (1894). The Maud Powell
Concert Company, a group of six musicians, visited South Africa in 1905; she
also formed the Maud Powell Trio with the company's cellist May Mukle and
pianist Anne Mukle Ford and toured the USA in 1908-9. In 1904 she became
the first solo instrumentalist to record for the Victor Talking Machine
Company's celebrity artist series (Red Seal label) and her recordings became
worldwide bestsellers. Most were reissued on CD by the Maud Powell Foundation in
1989. She made transcriptions for violin and piano, and composed an original
cadenza for Brahm's Violin Concerto; she also contributed
articles to music journals and wrote her own programme notes. The brilliance,
power and finish of her playing, combined with an unusual interpretative gift,
led her to be recognized as one of America's greatest violinsts; contemporary
reviewers ranked her alongside Kreisler and Ysaye.
Bibliography
DAS (F.H. Martens); NAW (A.R. Coolidge)
F.H. Martens; "Maud Powell', Violin Mastery (New York, 1919), 183-97
E.L. Winn: 'Maud Powell as I Know Her: a Tribute', Musical Observer, xix/3
(1920), 58-9
B. Schwarz: Great Masters of the Violin (New York, 1983) 494-7
K.A. Shaffer: 'Maud Powell: America's Legendary Musical Pioneer', Journal of the
Violin Society of America, iii/2 (1987), 89-112
K.A. Shaffer: "Perpetual Pioneer', The Strad, xcviii (1987), 824-9
K.A. Shaffer and N.G. Greenwood: Maud Pwell: Pioneer American Violinist (Ames,
IA, 1988)
Karen Shaffer
(New Grove)
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